Building Better Nurses at USF

Research underway at the School of Nursing and Health Professions could lead to better-trained nurses. Photo courtesy of Flad Architects.

Groundbreaking
research underway at USF’s new $1.7 million nursing simulation lab could
transform how nursing is taught at universities across the country and improve
nurses’ on-the-job performance.

Researchers
there are studying whether student nurses learn medical procedures best by
watching an instructional video, by performing them on a computerized
mannequin, or by administering to faux
patients (actors playing a part).

“We want
to know whether one type of simulation training or some combination of the
three is most effective,” said Judith Lambton, principal investigator on the
project and professor at USF’s School of Nursing and Health Professions. It is
an area that has never been studied before.

Undertaking
the study required the construction of a new lab—paid for by the U.S.
Department of Defense (DOD), with some funds contributed by the university.
Officials at the DOD, drawing on their past experience with flight simulation,
believe that medical simulation can increase nurses’ skills, reduce training
costs, and improve patient care.

Lambton
hopes the research results lead to a new standard for medical simulation
training. Its impact could be felt across the country, as other nursing
programs incorporate the findings into their curriculum.

Pre-med psychology major James Victor Kimpo ’15, said he’s thrilled to be
involved. “My experience with this project has been extremely valuable. I
certainly hope and believe that this first-of-its-kind study will help improve
nursing education, making it more effective for nursing students around the
world.”

The lab
is currently reserved primarily for research use until the project wraps up in
2013. At that point it will be turned over to USF and become a dual-purpose
teaching and research lab.